


A Fair Start

by heixicanadragon



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: Amputation, Canon Disabled Character, Fire, Gen, War, astrid hofferson the chief of berk, subvert all the gender tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A loose interpretation of the following prompt:</p>
<p>"Could someone please write a Hiccstrid Drabble in which Astrid admits to Hiccup that she has nightmares about him and the red death and the aftermath of him losing his leg. And how she was left somewhat traumatised by the experience that when Hiccup is in peril it really effects her emotionally. And she gets somewhat angry at Hiccup because he has a manner of being impulsive and Hiccup comforts her"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fair Start

Astrid of Berk is an overprotective and motherly mountain of a Chief to her entire village, the elders of whom barely recall the scrawny, tight-as-a-bowstring-strung-tempered girl she used to be. She’s a warrior who’s lost a few fingers and some mobility in a knee in addition to all the scars that trace her skin—battles with pirates, falls and scrapes from great heights, nips from teeth friend and foe. She can’t remember how many skirmishes she’s commanded, how many brushes with death she’s laughed or roared her way past, muscling her way through sheer force of will and her sharp axe’s blows.

She still remembers the utter terror she felt when she thought that Hiccup had died (for the first time), when she as a teen had to help Stoick gather a wounded and weary army of Vikings and somehow get them home using less than half the ships they'd arrived with and a handful of dragons that her parents’ generation had been extremely skittish of (and vice-versa) while making sure that no one was left behind.

She still remembers how that first taste of leadership warred in her heart with bone-tired weariness and adrenaline-rush sustained frantic movement--and concern and confusion over this slip of a dragon-tamer who _just wouldn’t wake up--_

And she had tried, as a youth, over and over, to open her mouth, to begin to explain to him a little of what she had felt that day, the pride and fear that had closed her throat as Toothless took him up to meet their destiny in the clouds, the way that she had trembled while the island shook with disastrous flame and the rushing force of a plummeting meteor, the gray blank of waiting for Stoick to pronounce his son dead or alive,

but she would only take one look at his alive, blinking eyes or stuttering, sideways mouth or clever hands slipping needle through leather or wool and knew that she couldn’t, not without him starting it.

When they’d lay down together and his nub of a calf would press against her thigh, or hook against the back of her knee, she sometimes had to fight the memories of that thunder, and all the subsequent fiery storms that she had pulled him through, and he her, but she’d just bear down harder into his mouth, muffling his moans and swearing to herself that she’d never fail him, that if it depends on her, she’ll be the first one on the paths to the underworld and he’ll die on his bed as an elder.

Later, Hiccup jokes in passing about the one time they took down the Queen Bee, so getting the harvest in this year will be a cinch (even with two extra months of hail and snow this spring),

but she grimaces, closes her eyes, and stands gripping the table, while Hiccup looks down and away, smiling, and if she could look at him right now she’d see him stiffen, see his eyes fade back down into a place where it’s all fire and smoke and falling and teeth gripping and slipping down and jumping up his calf—

until they startle, hearing the thump of Toothless jumping onto the roof, signaling the start of the day, and Hiccup grits his teeth and limps his usual way to the door and swings it open, calling for his dragon in that light, gentle tone reserved for his amputator and savior.

Astrid smiles at the familiar rhythm of dawn, following her right-hand and inventor out the door into the early morning’s biting cold, shielding her eyes against the sunrise, listening to Stormfly’s nest of dragonlings chirp for fish and Hiccup already chattering away as he buckles harness over Toothless’ back.

If she has a few nightmares a week in exchange for a slew of mornings like this, she counts it more than fair.


End file.
